So, it’s been a day, now let’s see those suggestions!
...There are none! How wonderful. Eh, I can work with it. Out of curiosity, though, I first check the existing save files of my pre-owned copy to laugh at the stupid and/or silly names those before me had used. There’s exactly one save file: a male with the name of Dean. How uneventful.
Out of respect for Dean and the great many accomplishments I’m sure he has, I leave his save file untouched and instead use the other, empty file. It then gives me the most difficult of moral choices: Do I want a penis or a vagina?
Well, there are apparently other changes, since from what I can see, the selectable genders have different weapons. Wait... I am a baka gaijin (I am so sorry for that), playing a game with a feudal Japanese setting, and the male character has a gun as one of his main weapons. I know what I must do! I must become Pontiff Xavi and go to this new land to spread my religion of LOVE♥!
Oh, and then personality quiz. Because my gardening hobby and favorite foods are so important on the battlefield.
And my answers apparently give away that I am an eccentric. Sounds about right. Despite this, I am still a bitch-ass soldier, and I must make a name for myself by not sucking in battle. Then I’ll go down in history as a famous soldier. Looks like I was right with the Marty Stu comments. But let’s ignore that for now, for I must now cut myself a path through history! And through the touch screen, just to give that thing some use in this game.
Following touch screen gimmicks, I’m subject to an intro that shows off a decent amount of the characters. I would post a link to it, but sadly, the only ones I can find make one’s eyes bleed from the terrible recording quality. One thing of note is that both playable characters appear in the intro. Either the developers were too lazy to make separate intros for each of them, or the female character will appear as a companion to Xavi and help spread his religion.
I’m hoping for the latter, mainly in the vain hopes of a harem end, but nobody needs to hear of my fantasizing! Right after the intro, the main menu appears, and we’re jumping straight into story mode! Upon clicking it, there’s an opening narration about the tumultuous times of the warring states era, and how amongst it, one warrior aims to be an envoy of Xavism a mighty hero. Your standard stuff, really, though the art that accompanies it is admittedly rather pretty.
Afterward, there’s a chapter select screen, but since I’ve just started, let’s jump straight into:
Part 1: Heroes Rise
More narration of Xavi wanting to become a mighty hero (as a cover for his religious teachings, of course), and now a battle select screen. Of course, only one is available. After choosing it, it gives me options for difficulty. Let’s go with normal, because I am not a soft baby man, nor am I a hardcore warrior god (at least, not yet).
1546 – Siege of Kawagoe Castle
Even more narration about the warring states era, but this bit of it at least exposits on this battle in particular; the Hojo clan has claimed Kawagoe Castle, and a couple of other clans invade it because everyone was kind of a dick in the warring states era. Ujiyasu, then-head of the Hojo, moves to the castle to defend it.
Ujiyasu starts narrating in conjunction with the narration, and of note are two things: the portraits are 3D models, which look surprisingly good, and there’s only a Japanese voice option. This will be annoying, just because there’s often in-battle chatter in these types of games. Reading it means having to stop whatever I’m doing entirely, since I can’t just listen to it. Or I can just not read it and potentially miss out on valuable information, and that would just be so intelligent.
Anyway, Ujiyasu starts talking about how long the siege is taking despite the size of the invading army (80,000 to the Hojo’s 8,000, and thus far the siege has been six months), and declares that he will stop the siege in its entirety that night. Of course you will, Ujiyasu; I’ll be on your side tonight!
Oh, and then Xavi appears to receive lessons from Ujiyasu. Xavi, I was just joking. You really shouldn’t just barge into the middle of a long and drawn-out invasion for personal reasons. The pre-battle screen appears, and Ujiyasu explains that the mission is to get Benchiyo Fukushima to Kawagoe Castle. The very first mission is an Escort Mission. Joy.
Time to start the battle! I do so and am immediately greeted by a legion of Mooks. I get a brief tutorial about attacking, but end up not needing it. This is largely because the subtleties of combat systems tend to be lost when the enemies die in two hits. After a bit of murdering plebians, I get the mission to defeat Norikage Nagao, so that Benchiyo can make his way to Kawagoe. I also get FREE MONEY if I do it within a minute! The money beckons to Xavi’s soul; the money shall spread his religion to all!
Norikage goes down with essentially zero effort, and I am free to eviscerate more minions until I get another mission to defeat Sukemasa Ota, who is approaching the battlefield. I have to defeat him within 30 seconds, when he’s halfway across the map. Sure, game. Sure.
Well, I suppose that’s why it happens to give me a tutorial on switching between controlling characters at that point. I switch control to Ujiyasu, who defeats Sukemasa with ease. Right then, more reinforcements! Sukeaki Ota and Norishige Nanbada appear then, and I now have the mission to defeat them both. Sukeaki miiiiight be a little peeved about Ujiyasu killing his relative.
This seems to be when the character switching mechanic really comes into play; I kill Sukeaki with Ujiyasu, then have to quickly switch to Xavi to defeat Norishige to get the bonus. While beating up Norishige, I accidentally destroy a barricade. Do you know what this means? Unlike Sengoku Basara, you can actually destroy barricades in this game OH MY GOD GAME OF THE YEAR.
A defense captain appears afterward to defend a garrison, and my next mission is to kick his ass. You know, I’m really seeing a pattern to these missions. Ujiyasu destroys him as he is wont to do with plebians, and quickly does the same to the captain within the garrison, Todosada Uesugi. For Xavi supposedly being an original character do not steal, I’m not really using him a lot.
And then Shingen Takeda suddenly appears and starts talking about helping the Uesugi since they’re doing so terribly. And then he appears on the battle field with Masanobu Kosaka. If Shingen’s anything like he is in Sengoku Basara, the resulting fight will be very manly, very painful, or both. Oodles of fun.
And then the resulting mission’s difficulty is only ranked 1 star out of 5! Koei cannot into difficulty. I also have to defeat them both within one minute, and I’m pretty sure it takes me longer than that to defeat just Shingen. Before I can even beat Masanobu, though, new mission! I really hope they don’t pile on like this in every battle. They probably will, since I have notoriously bad luck with this sort of thing.
The new mission is to stop Masanaga Nagao from reaching the enemy army’s main camp. It’s ranked 4 stars in difficulty; the highest prior to this point has been 2. Joy.
And then it ends up not warranting 4 stars of difficulty in the slightest. As I said, Koei cannot into difficulty. Maybe I’m just the hardcore warrior god I thought I wasn’t, and I am just amazing at this. Anyway, Masanaga and Masanobu both fall in short order, and only now am I told of how to issue orders to other characters.
Aya appears at this point, and the new mission is to stop her from reaching a captain who’s in the allied main camp. I assume I was supposed to issue Ujiyasu to deal with it while Xavi did other things, but I’m already controlling Ujiyasu at the moment, so there goes that idea.
Instead, ONWARD, UJIYASU! KILL MORE PEOPLE BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT DONE ENOUGH OF THAT YET! I use him to attack Aya, and end up finishing her with some kind of blast to the face. As much as I keep using that move, I have no idea what it actually is. Ujiyasu somehow fires shells out of the end of a staff, or something.
And then long ass exposition about obvious things like draining the health of enemy captains, not letting the health of your own captains get drained, and how to level up (spoiler: It involves experience points). Afterwards, I am left to aimlessly wander about, and so I assume that it’s time to finish the level by killing the leader, Norimasa Uesugi.
Xavi is closer and needs the experience anyway, so I take control of him, while sending Ujiyasu to dick around elsewhere. While dicking around with Xavi, I discover that clashes can occur if the blades of two characters collide. Weirdly, one wins the clash by mashing L and R, respectively the guard and special attack buttons. Special attacks aren’t even really attacks; they’re more like StatusBuffs.
Regardless of gameplay quirks, Xavi boldly presses on to the main enemy stronghold and defeats Norimasa with his rather silly yet strangely cool super attack. He makes an X out of Razor Wind, then shoots it with his rifle (he wields it one-handed, by the way), igniting it and sending it flying at the enemy. And with that anticlimax, the siege of Kawagoe Castle comes to an end!
The results screen shows Xavi growing to level 6 and Ujiyasu to level 8. Despite this, Xavi gains more stats total. For a Crutch Character, Ujiyasu was not terribly better than Xavi. Or maybe the enemies were just so terribly easy, I didn’t notice a difference. I also have to distribute weapons, but end up getting nothing terribly interesting from that.
In the post-battle cutscene, Ujiyasu talks about how stupid the enemy was, giving me hope the enemies were intentionally ridiculously easy (for reasons other than being the first level, of course). Narration also reveals that the Uesugi clan was driven out of the territory, and Yoshimoto Imagawa, fearing the awesome might of Xavism, entered an alliance with the Takeda. So I’m not done with Shingen; oh, that’ll just be funfunfun.
Ujiyasu complements Xavi’s religious fanaticism strength at so young an age, but says strength alone won’t make him remembered. Instead, he needs a purpose behind his strength! Accompanying this is a dialogue option: I can either ask him how to find my purpose, or tell him he’s wrong and stupid.
Given that I don’t want everybody to hate me, I think the answer is obvious. Sadly, Ujiyasu cannot teach me in all his splendor, but instead gives the vague advice that not getting caught up on the little things will let me see the greater truth in the world. That means I can just skip the missions and kill the boss straightaway? Awesome!
Well, not really, since Xavi thinks deeply about the idea before leaving the Hojo army. He’s just so reliable, isn’t he?
Regardless, with that, as well as a tutorial on Relationship Values, chapter 1 comes to an end. Join me next time for the newly unlocked battle, Conflict at Itsukushima!
